Fairiemom

History…. August 17, 2011

About three years ago my oldest daughter saw a scraggly little grey tiger stripped kitten hanging out in our drive way. She was worried about it (as she is about all animals she sees around our house). We watched it for a couple days, while she and her brother tried to befriend it.

Finally i told them they could put out a bit of food (since I knew none of our near neighbors had a kitten and was unsure anyone was actually feeding it). So we bgan putting out a small amount of food and keeping an eye on it. One neighbor shared that she too had been putting out food since she was concerned it might have a litter of kittens.

over the next few weeks we put out a bit of food and the kids kept trying to befriend her. We were surprised that she actually responded pretty quickly. She wasn’t cuddly or over friendly but she would sit a let you pet her if you didn’t approach her too fast or try to pick her up. We still were not sure where she came from until jsut before easter. Some folks came by the house jogging and saw they kids playing with her. They told us she was about 12 years old and that she seemed to like us better than them and if we wanted her we could keep her.

The next two and a half years were a mix of this ball of occasionally grumpy fur inside/outside/back inside until she clawed Chuck’s leg/outside again…. The kids nicknamed her grumpier since she was as likely to growl at you as purr. Once Catherine was old enough to claim ownership she was Catherine’s cat. The funny part about this cat was that she did have more patience with Catherine than anyone else. Catherine could unceremoniously pick her up and recieve a growl, hiss and wiggle to get down while one of the rest of us would get clawed.

She achieved an uneasy peace with the other cats and had an on again/off again war with Chuck (she once hopped up on his lap to cuddle … or so he thought… she ended up peeing in his lap). She really surprised us this past halloween when she calmly lay in Chuck’s lap as he passed out halloween candy (even going so far as to let a couple of kids pet her).

Yesterday I noticed something was wrong. She had recently moved back out side because she seemd to think the living room was her litter box. She wasn’t walking normally. Last night she didn’t want to eat and the inside of her back leg look raw. I debated between keeping her in for the night and putting her back outside. Since she had always been an outside cat at heart I put her back out. This morning I found that she had died.

She wasn’t a sweet cuddly kitten… she was opinionated, grouchy and a ton of other negative stuff but…. She would also curl up in my lap to watch tv. Or lay on the recliner next to Catherine to be petted. Or run across the drive way purring when we came home. She picked us. And we will miss her.

RIP Koneko.